Re: current directory

As I said, look around, check out Crisp for instance, you would be surprised:

`C-h a crisp RET' yields:
crisp-mode M-x ... RET
Command: Toggle CRiSP/Brief emulation minor mode.
And here's what the Emulation node of the Emacs manual says about it:
CRiSP/Brief (PC editor)
You can turn on key bindings to emulate the CRiSP/Brief editor with
`M-x crisp-mode'. Note that this rebinds `M-x' to exit Emacs
unless you set the variable `crisp-override-meta-x'. You can also
use the command `M-x scroll-all-mode' or set the variable
`crisp-load-scroll-all' to emulate CRiSP's scroll-all feature
(scrolling all windows together).

no long keystrokes, much wider use of keys (say astersk on the numeric keypad
and on the main keyboard are naturally assigned to different key codes _
still have to find the way to achieve this with emacs, and I've tried!).